


Burn the Witch

by porygonkin



Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen, Minor Horror Elements, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 07:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13071582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porygonkin/pseuds/porygonkin
Summary: First, the fire. Then, the darkness. Jean Grey never wanted either one.





	Burn the Witch

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to the end of Jean Grey #10, imagining how it might go. It almost 100% won't take this path, but it was the first thing I thought of after reading it.

All she could feel was the fire.

 

Encompassing every fiber of her being, every single cell - everything, white-hot. A pain so strong, so bright in her mind, that she couldn’t even think. She couldn’t even begin to attempt a counter-assault, push back psychically, anything - the only sound in her head was her own screaming.

 

She’d worried about this sort of situation - the Phoenix descending back to Earth to possess her, to convert her, to reunite itself with its closest partner. The prospect occupied every waking moment, whether she was with her team or by herself. She thought she’d been prepared. Her ethereal, ghostly counterpart thought so, too. Until the Phoenix said that she was an impostor. A blemish to be wiped out of existence.

 

And so, Jean Grey burned.

 

Suddenly, white turned to black. The pain, the burning, the screaming, everything stopped. Jean’s mind had been so consumed by her suffering that the sudden absence didn’t register, and it took her several moments to even realize that anything had changed, that all she could feel now was the hollow silence in her head.

 

Jean couldn’t see anything. She tried to whip her head around - nothing. She tried to close her eyes - nothing - and tried to probe outwards psychically. This time, she finally encountered some sort of sensation - but it was a wall, knocking her back.

 

_“Where…where am I? What is this?”_

 

Jean’s senses, she realized, were completely deadened; no sight, no sound, no touch. She couldn’t tell if she was moving any part of her body - couldn’t even tell if she _had_ a body. It was as if she’d been dumped in some sort of mental isolation chamber, separated from everything except her own thoughts. Jean tried to center herself, keep from panicking, but she could feel a pressure in the back of her mind, intrusive thoughts pushing her to freak out.

 

_“No…no…I can figure this out…”_

 

“It’s alright, Jean.”

 

Another voice, out of the darkness. For the first time since the Phoenix possessed her, she could see something - someone. The woman seemed to meld into being, as though she’d been standing in a fog and was walking out. A tall figure, confident stride, a small, seemingly reluctant smile.

 

Long, bright red hair.

 

The older Jean Grey. The _proper_ Jean Grey, young Jean bitterly thought to herself. The one the Phoenix really wanted. The Jean Grey that was meant to be in this universe, this time period.

 

She didn’t look dead. No, to young Jean, she looked very, very much alive. Something about that was deeply unsettling.

 

“Ah, right, looks like you haven’t really gotten your bearings yet - let me help with that.”

 

The younger Jean felt a strange _pop,_ and suddenly all of her senses flooded her mind. She raised her hands - hands that were suddenly real again - and clutched the sides of her head, groaning from the sensation. Her eyes looked around wildly - everything was still black, but she at least knew her vision worked, and the panic in the back of her mind began to recede.

 

“What’s going on, Jean?” the younger Jean asked. “Where am I? Where is this?”

 

Jean’s smile became a little more strained. “The Phoenix…you know what it did. You weren’t ready to handle its power, and it knew that. It saw you as an obstacle. I wish I could have done something more -“

 

“Am I dead?” Young Jean interrupted. Her older counterpart’s smile faded entirely.

 

The younger Jean covered her face with her hands, overwhelmed by the prospect. “Am I?”

 

Jean sighed.

 

“Your body was destroyed, consumed by the fire. But your consciousness lingered long enough for me to…to save you, in a way. You’re in my head now. You’re safe here.”

 

“Your head…but…” young Jean struggled to find the words. “But you’re dead, too.”

 

Jean frowned. She seemed to be getting impatient, as if the conversation had already gone on too long.

 

“The Phoenix wanted _me_ , Jean. It needed me to come back. You were there, and you…you ended up being the conduit, the key to bringing me back here. Back to Earth.”

 

Young Jean’s eyes widened, as everything finally clicked into place in her mind. She felt as if she were about to throw up.

 

“The Phoenix replaced me with you,” she said, shaking. “It burned me up and brought you back from the ashes instead.”

 

“Now you understand,” Jean replied.

 

“But there has to be a way for - for me to come back, right?” the younger Jean said, her panic levels rising again. “I can’t be trapped here, in your head forever. My team needs me. J-Jimmy, Hank, Warren, Bobby…S-Scott…I can’t leave them alone.”

 

Jean crossed her arms and examined her nails, tilting her head to the side. Her demeanor had changed substantially; the younger Jean felt an aura of hostility forming around her. It felt confrontational, like Jean was ready to put her younger counterpart down.

 

“Maybe this is how it has to be, Jean,” she said, looking up at the younger Jean.

 

“What? What does that mean?” She stepped back, trying to create distance between the two of them. But each step felt like she wasn’t moving at all, like she was on a treadmill. Jean’s aura felt like a weight on her chest, and young Jean could barely breathe. She swore she was heating up.

 

“The Phoenix came to Earth because it discovered you,” Jean continued. “It sensed you, and knew that you were _a_ Jean Grey. But you weren’t me. You’re not me. You never were, and you never will be. It didn’t want you. It wanted me.”

 

Jean began walking towards her younger counterpart, and the younger Jean was paralyzed with fear. She’d never felt this level of malice from her older self, and she couldn’t tell if it was the Phoenix, or if it was just Jean. At this point, she wasn’t sure if there was a difference.

 

“I didn’t want to come back, Jean. I didn’t want it to turn out this way. I thought things would be fine if the damn bird would just _wait,_ wait for you to get older, stronger. Everyone always says that you’re stronger than I was at your age, and they’re right. You had so much potential, and the amount of control you have over your abilities is terrifying when applied the right way. Just imagine what you could have become with the Phoenix.”

 

She shook her head.

 

“But you’re not me.”

 

Young Jean tried again to backpedal, to just create some _distance_ between the two of them, but it was as if she was suspended in the air, flailing her limbs but unable to move. Jean was now just inches from her face, and the younger Jean thought she could see a hint of orange in her eyes.

 

“The Phoenix knew you didn’t belong here. You’re not of this time or of this universe. Hank and his damn schemes…he is such a smart man, but he thinks with his heart too often when it comes to us. Thinking he could fix Scott by bringing up ghosts from the past…and look where it’s gotten us. Scott’s dead, and I’m…I’m back in hell.”

 

Jean’s voice dropped to a whisper.

 

“But it’s too late now. The Phoenix does what the Phoenix wants. It tried other hosts, tried to share its power with the right people, tried to forge the same bond, but this was always how it was going to end. It always finds a way.”

 

She took a breath, and sighed. The glow faded from her eyes, and Jean seemed to get herself under control again.

 

Young Jean’s knees trembled. Of all the scenarios she’d imagined when she first discovered that the Phoenix was returning for her, this was not one of them. Jean Grey, the Phoenix’s strongest host, its true partner, was in full control. Nothing could terrify her more.

 

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, her voice small and frail.

 

“Nothing.” Jean turned and walked to her right. When she stopped, a portal opened in front of her, showing the beach on which they had confronted the Phoenix. Her view.

 

“You’re in my head, Jean. I’m not going to do anything to you. I saved you, and that’s enough. So you’ll stay here, and I’ll…live. You’ll live with me, but I want to be very clear: I’m in control. Think of it as watching a movie.”

 

“What?” the younger Jean said, the word escaping from her mouth out of pure disbelief. She was trapped - trapped in the mind of her older self, the prime Jean Grey, forever.

 

“Goodbye, Jean. I’ll check in with you later.” Without another word, Jean faded away, leaving the portal of Jean’s vision open.

 

“Wait!!” the younger Jean screamed. She tried to race over to the portal, but found that she still was not moving anywhere, even with a frame of reference to focus on. She grabbed her head, pulled at her hair. There had to be a way out.

 

The panic took over. She tried everything she could think of, every psychic technique she’d learned, pushed out as hard as she could. Nothing. Not even resistance now - it was as if Jean was standing in an endless, open field, her energy wasted.

 

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Nothing greeted her but silence.

 

Jean would have preferred the fire.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never been an X-Men guy. There's something about X-Men that just never connected with me on any meaningful level. Maybe it's the big ensemble casts that make individual characters feel like they're just parts of a whole. I don't know. I'm just bullshitting, really.
> 
> I have enjoyed X-Men: Blue this year, though. I initially started reading it because Jimmy Hudson, for some reason, is a core part of the book. But I found myself drawn to the time-displaced Jean Grey, and the rest of the team isn't too bad, either. My general apathy for X-Men led me to not even bother with Jean's solo series, though. At least, not until I saw the end of issue 10.
> 
> What a twist. The Phoenix returns to Earth, and after young Jean spent the entire book figuring out how to fight the Phoenix, alongside her dead prime universe counterpart, it turns out that the Phoenix didn't want her at all - it just wanted to get her out of the way, to lead into the regular return of prime Jean, for the first time in over a decade. I suppose this will end up being a narrative device that leads to the rest of the time-displaced Original Five being cleared out as part of Legacy, but did Jean really have to go out like this? God damn. Poor girl never saw it coming. But it laid some interesting foundation, and I'll admit, I'm much more interested in prime Jean's upcoming resurrection now.
> 
> Please forgive me if prime Jean is out of character. Like I said before, I've never been an X-Men guy, and therefore I'm not super familiar with Jean Grey and the Phoenix, but I was just grabbed by the idea in this story and had to pound it out. I wasn't even going to post it initially, but I might as well, you know?


End file.
